Narrating Nature

Narrating Nature

By Swadha Rawat

 

 A Short Note on this Poem

 5th June is World Environment Day and in this time of reckless consumerism, rampant pollution and strictly online activism, the question looming over us is : what will the environment and nature and all this biodiversity look like for our children? Will it still exist?

I'm sixteen and for almost half my life, the go to thing I'd watch was Animal Planet or National Geographic. I grew up watching Bindi the Jungle Girl and on my tenth birthday, instead of celebrating it, I wanted to go to an animal sanctuary and see what tigers looked like out in the wild, not through a screen. 

I could go to Ranthambore National Park and see nature but can the next generation, or the one after that? The Convention on Biological Diversity concluded that up to 150 species are lost everyday. Yes, even today. Even on World Environment Day. The reality is bleak. Our water is polluted, our air unbreathable, our forests are non existent, fragile ecosystems and interconnected food webs are unravelling. 

It is time for action. 

It is time for change. 

Toothless treaties like the Paris Climate Agreement aren't going to help us. And neither are government policies that often lack funding, execution or even a feasible framework. Don't just tweet about World Environment Day today, make a difference in how you do things. Choose circular brands, sustainable actions and volunteer, if not money, then your time. 

I don't want to live on an Earth where I have to buy oxygen or where the only tigers that exist are in books or on the internet. 

"This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. This is not something you can like on Facebook." -Greta Thunberg

The Earth comes to a stop

With a shuddering gasp

And a jarring jolt,

With a creaking bucket pulled out of an empty well

And a dark cloud that buzzes as it moves.

There is no horn and there is no holy proclamation

Because technically life still goes on.

 

Teenage-me sits in a closed-up house

Behind a glowing laptop screen

With an infrequent and nowhere near rhythmic clicking of keys

And hopes

That decades from now, when old age-me

Sits in an opened-up home

With children at my feet,

That I will not have to narrate to them-

 

How the waters glimmered and shone

As sleek bodied dolphins and whales frolicked and spun.

How the mountaintops were covered with fine dusted sugar

And home to sure footed goats fleeing up cliff faces as jagged as

The teeth of the elusive snowy predator who called them home.

 

How tall grassland grasses grew

And changed from hue to hue with the changing seasons,

And how the tops of their stalks trembled

Just like the cheetal deer who bolted when a tiger drew near.

 

How there floated from flower to flower

These beings of seemingly infinitesimal colours

And these buzzing winged fliers

Who created the most delightful nectar.

 

How the night sky shone

With the glimmer of a thousand diamond studs

In an unfathomably dark velveteen cloth

Which with the rising of the Sun

Changed to breathy blue cotton and wool

Across which glided and flapped feathery winged ones.

 

Because how could I possibly describe

To children born in another time, on another Earth,

How intoxicating the soil smelt after rain

And how children ran out, faces grinning at the sky,

To welcome it.

How many different creatures roamed the world,

The various shapes and patterns and pelts and sounds

That they wore and sung.

Or how light clean air smelt or how soft the grass,

Or how the dashing glimpse of a rainbow filled the sky.

 

How can I explain to children who 

Have never see, heard, felt, breathed, or lived

Nature

It’s very wonder.